When Buying a New Device, Think Applications Not Hardware

I've long told people not to be dazzled by hardware when it comes to choosing which mobile device to purchase. Keep it simple, and think about how you'll really be using it.

Someone recently suggested to me that smartphones will replace PCs in two years. It's true that demand for PCs has declined over the last decade, from 365 million shipped in 2011 to 262 million last year, according to Statista.

At the same time, demand for smartphones has grown exponentially, while tablets put a small dent in PC sales.

So it would be easy to say we are in a post-PC era. But that assessment is too simplistic. There are so many other dynamics at play, including more mobile work styles, age demographics, and dozens of new form factors that blur the line of what personal computing means.

Given those dynamics, Creative Strategies has been researching why people buy particular devices and there are two consistent threads among most buyers of laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

Applications are at the center of their buying decisions, but it turns out the other key factor is size. And in most cases, this means display and form factor. But one size does not fit all, so many of us end up with at least two personal computing devices. In most cases, that means laptops and smartphones, but some can get away with just using a tablet and smartphone. Very few got by with just a smartphone.

Still, there a few form factor changes on the horizon that could challenge our idea what we consider a laptop, tablet or smartphone. As I wrote in June, flexible display prototypes blur the line between smartphone and tablet. When a 5.5-inch smartphone unfolds into a 9.3-inch tablet, is it now a smartphone or a tablet?

There are also dual-screen tablets and laptops. One tablet design I saw had two 9.7-inch screens for about 19 inches of screen real estate. Another had two 12-inch screens. In both cases, there is a seam in the middle so content is not continuous across both screens; one task displays on the left, another on the right.

This means that ultimately the type of mobile device one chooses to use will be based on the types of applications they use. I've long told people not to be dazzled by hardware when it comes to choosing which mobile device to purchase. Keep it simple, and think about how you'll really be using it.

About the Author

Tim Bajarin is recognized as one of the leading industry consultants, analysts, and futurists covering the field of personal computers and consumer technology. Mr. Bajarin has been with Creative Strategies since 1981 and has served as a consultant to most of the leading hardware and software vendors in the industry including IBM, Apple, Xerox, Compaq, Dell, AT&T, Microsoft, Polaroid, Lotus, Epson, Toshiba, and numerous others. Mr. Bajarin is known as a concise, futuristic analyst, credited with predicting the desktop publishing revolution three years before it hit the market, and identifying multimedia as a major trend in written reports as early as 1984. He has authored major industry studies on PC, ... See Full Bio